Track Meteorites with Interactive Map! Strikes Date Back to 2,300 BCE

Track meteorites in an interactive map that shows strikes dating as far back as 2,300 BCE. (Photo : Screenshot of Map/Powered by Cartobd)

Want to track meteorite strikes dating back to 2,300 BCE? Now you can. Javier de la Torre, cofounder of geo software companies Vizzuality and CartoDB, has created an interactive, heat map that allows the user to see every recorded meteorite impact.

Considering that a meteorite slammed into central Russia just last week, it's not surprising that this map would gain some attention. The incident in Russia left over 1,000 people injured. As the meteorite broke apart over the Ural Mountains, it created a shockwave which caused glass to shatter.

The map was created by De la Torre using CaroDB's mapping software, according to The Verge. The software relies of the free, crowdsourced OpenStreetMap for its base layer. The actual data that was used to create the sites for impact areas, though, was collected from the Meteoritical Society, which is an international nonprofit scientific collaboration.

As you scroll along the map, you can click on specific impact sites in order to see the size, location and year that the meteorite strike occurred. The map itself seems to show that quite a few strikes occurred in the U.S. and UK, while less occurred in Brazil. That said, this clustering that occurs could just be due to the fact that there's more complete data for some areas than others.

It's an impressive map considering that De la Torre claims that it only took him 30 minutes to create it. In contrast, it took far longer to collect all of the data necessary to create that map.

Want to check out the map yourself? Click here to see the various meteorite strikes that have occurred over the centuries. You can even zoom down into your area to see the last time it was struck.